Real Steel

Lunch has always been my favorite part of the work day. I know that isn't a very controversial stand to take - I might as well declare that the Chicago winters get pretty bad or Hugh Jackman should have taken his shirt off more in "Real Steel" - but, nonetheless, I stand by it. Lunch is awesome. Lunch is the breath that breaks up my day. It's a chance to escape my desk and clear my head. Just when my eyeballs feel like they're going to melt from overexposure to spreadsheets and Google Docs, in swoops my lunch break, like Batman after a call from Commissioner Gordon, here to save the day. I grab my...

Keisha Howard's wildest video game fantasy came true as a contestant on Syfy's new competition series "Robot Combat League. " The 28-year old Lakeview resident was recently chosen as one of a dozen "robo-jockeys" for the show, which pits 8-foot-tall, half-ton humanoid robots against each other in a series of arena-style boxing matches to compete for a $100,000 prize. The bot-on-bot action resembles Hugh Jackman's hit movie, "Real Steel" - the shadowboxing moves of exo suit-wearing operators directly translate into metal-on-metal jabs.

Keisha Howard's wildest video game fantasy came true as a contestant on Syfy's new competition series "Robot Combat League. " The 28-year old Lakeview resident was recently chosen as one of a dozen "robo-jockeys" for the show, which pits 8-foot-tall, half-ton humanoid robots against each other in a series of arena-style boxing matches to compete for a $100,000 prize. The bot-on-bot action resembles Hugh Jackman's hit movie, "Real Steel" - the shadowboxing moves of exo suit-wearing operators directly translate into metal-on-metal jabs.

Lunch has always been my favorite part of the work day. I know that isn't a very controversial stand to take - I might as well declare that the Chicago winters get pretty bad or Hugh Jackman should have taken his shirt off more in "Real Steel" - but, nonetheless, I stand by it. Lunch is awesome. Lunch is the breath that breaks up my day. It's a chance to escape my desk and clear my head. Just when my eyeballs feel like they're going to melt from overexposure to spreadsheets and Google Docs, in swoops my lunch break, like Batman after a call from Commissioner Gordon, here to save the day. I grab my...

The last thing you want a competition series called "Robot Combat League" is to dwell on the personalities of its human contestants like "Top Chef," "Survivor" and a million other such shows do. You just want to see giant robots beating the circuitry out of each other. In its premiere, "Robot Combat League" ( 9 p.m. CT Feb. 26, Syfy; 2.5 stars ) takes too long to introduce viewers to the 24 players that make up 12 teams battling for a $100,000 prize and setting things up for the audience.

***1/2 (out of four) Forget “Avatar,” a movie with supposedly mind-blowing visuals that looked cool for a while but, because James Cameron offered nothing else, I eventually thought, “This is pretty. And pretty bad.” Want to see a wonder that makes your eyes pop and jaw drop? Director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro's “Pacific Rim” is that rare beast, a movie that demands you get out of the house and see it on the biggest screen possible. Sure, del Toro (“Pan's Labyrinth”)

** (out of four) Boy, motion-capture technology has come a long way. In “Flight,” that really looks like Denzel Washington. Just kidding. For the first time since 2000's “Cast Away,” Chicago-native director Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”) returns to the land of the living. Following failed motion-capture experiments “The Polar Express” and “A Christmas Carol,” he's chosen to direct a script from a guy whose credits include “Real Steel” and “Summer Catch.” Maybe that's why the already overrated “Flight” lands sooner...

* (out of four) If you collect a massive variety of species into a confined space for a long period of time, the animals will need to go to the bathroom. They'll need to eat. They probably will not all hang together like mellow, long-lost pals. Of course, belief and logic are mutually exclusive, and it's tough to visually depict a story that relies on the former without making it look like pure fantasy. So in director/co-writer Darren Aronofsky's misguided, superficial “Noah,” the title character (Russell Crowe)

It's Week 6 of the Survivor Fantasy Football League and Chicago's #1 White Sox fan - Soxman - continues to toil in the middle of the pack. Meanwhile, yours truly got hit with some karma after making a controversial trade with another competitor. What happened to Soxman ? What were the consequences of my machinations? Read on and see for yourself: Soxman: The best way for me to summarize fantasy week six is that I had no Luck at all. No Andrew Luck that is! His failure to find the end zone on Monday...